Final Grades that include Exemptions

Relevant to: faculty, staff

This content was edited using AI.

This article contains information considered accurate at the time of publishing. Technology updates, changes in University security practices, and/or policies and procedures may affect the information in this article - updates to articles are scheduled on a periodic basis and will address any required changes.

Introduction

This article explains how grade exemptions affect final grade calculations in Brightspace. It covers how exempted grade items are excluded from a learner’s final grade, how instructors can exclude items under different grading methods, and how exemptions affect grade statistics and release conditions. If you have any questions about the content below, please submit a ticket and a member of the Empire Online team will respond promptly.

How Grade Exemptions Affect Scores

Grade exemptions can impact final grade calculations in the following ways:

• Any grade item marked as exempt is left out of the final grade calculation. An exempt item is treated as having no grade rather than receiving a score of zero, even when Treat Ungraded Items as 0 is enabled.
• If a learner is exempt from every item included in the final grade calculation, there are no grades available to calculate a final score. As a result, no final grade score will be displayed.

Excluding a Grade Item from the Final Grade Calculation

The steps for excluding a grade item from the Final Grade calculation depend on the grading method being used. For example:

• Points: Grade items include an Exclude from Final Grade Calculation option.
• Weighted: Set the weight of the grade item to 0 to prevent it from contributing to the final grade.
• Formula: Leave the grade item's value out of the formula used to calculate the final grade. Although this option is not supported by the University and best practices suggests using either the Point or Weighted options.
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To exclude a Points-based grade item from the Final Grade calculation

1. Navigate to Grades.
2. Locate the grade item you want to exclude. Open the grade item's context menu and select Edit.
3. On the Properties tab, locate the Grading section and select Exclude from Final Grade Calculation.
4. Select Save and Close.

The Points-based grade item is now excluded from the Final Grade calculation.

Viewing Grade Item Statistics with Exemptions

On the Class Statistics tab, learners who are exempt from all grade items within a category are accounted for differently in the statistics:

• The number of submitted grades is adjusted to exclude learners who are exempt.
• Statistical calculations, such as the minimum and maximum scores, do not include exempt learners.
• Exempt learners are not included in the grade distribution.

If a learner is exempt from every grade item in a category, Exempt appears for that learner on the User Statistics page. If the learner is exempt from only some items, the category statistics are calculated using the remaining applicable grades.

How Grade Exemptions Affect Release Conditions

Instructors can use release conditions to make content available to learners after certain grading requirements have been met. Because an exemption is considered neither a completed nor an incomplete grade item, it can affect the following release conditions:

• Grade Value on grade item
• No grade received

These release conditions recognize the exemption and are not triggered simply because an exemption exists. For example, if content has a Grade Value on grade item release condition, a learner who is exempt from that grade item will not satisfy the condition and therefore will not gain access to the associated content.